Fable Video Game Franchise is not dead, may return in the future

[dropcap size=small]T[/dropcap]he Fable franchise has not been doing great recently. In the past year, Fable: Legends was canceled and developer Lionhead Studios, the developer for the Fable franchise, closed it’s doors leaving the future of the franchise in question. Xbox boss Phil Spencer, however, does not believe that we have seen the last of Fable.

While answering fan questions on Twitter early this week Spencer was asked about developing and releasing Fable 4. He said that there was “nothing to announce right now but the IP has a lot of places it could go”.

This is a very interesting answer from Spencer, who, in a recent interview with The Guardian said that the “market for single-player, story-based games wasn’t consistent and that this makes it harder for publishers to put a lot of money into making these games. The first three Fable games were single-player story games and it would make sense that Fable 4, if it was created, would be one too.

However, Microsoft is still looking for another “traditional” large-scale franchise after Scalebound was canceled earlier this year, which was expected to join the ranks of Gears of War and Halo as a tent pole traditional franchise for Xbox. This leaves a hole to fill and since Microsoft already owns the rights to Fable, and it has a history of past successes, it would make sense to revive the franchise now.

There is the issue of figuring out what developer would be given the project but since Microsoft has partnerships with multiple small developers it should not have a big problem there. It will be interesting to see what happens next in the saga of the Fable franchise.